Rise Up! #46: Paul MacEwen of Slow Rise Bakery on Gabriola Island, BC

He had no idea until we spoke, but Paul MacEwan was a huge inspiration to me as a baker and bakery builder. That’s because I stumbled across their bakery building blog way back in 2007 and read and re-read every single post.

The blog covered the step by step process of building an absolutely gorgeous timber bake house in the woods of Gabriola Island, BC and then building a massive brick oven in the middle of the bake house.

Holy! If they could build all that and start baking for farmer’s markets, the least I could do is build a brick oven and start selling bread to friends, right?

In this episode, I finally got to meet Paul and learn how things have changed since those first days 12 years ago. His bakery has undergone a lot of changes, not least of which included swapping out the brick oven for a state of the art wood fired (!) deck oven and pulling back to serving Gabriola Islanders exclusively.

It’s a compelling story and has me dreaming of forests and ferries again. Enjoy the show!

You can hear the show via the player below or by heading over to the show page.